Interacting with the API

First steps

A development team should first become familiar with the API reference that describes the RESTful API.

Target the QA or Pre-Prod environment and try calling the GET operation on the Banks endpoint. This endpoint is public, not requiring authentication; beyond supplying the Product Id to identify yourself as a valid consumer. It is the first, simplest, step to interacting with the API and is one of the first calls you will make within the real world business flow, to show the list of supported Banks to the user; this is the Banking Service equivalent of “Hello World”.

Ensure that it is easy for you to configure the environment you are targeting, as from time-to-time you may be required, or wish, to target QA instead of Pre-Prod. As your delivery dates approach you will need to seamlessly ‘switch up’ through the available environments, ultimately into Production.

Environments

API

The root endpoint for all calls made to the API is:

[Domain URL]/api/v[#]/

(e.g. https://ppeu.sagebankdrive.com/api/v1/ for EU-hosted, Pre-Production)

* If no primaryCountry filter is provided on the call to GET/Banks, this is the default that will be used.

For each environment we have data servers located in different geographical regions, to support legal requirements from the Banks, or the country they are located in, that specify in which region their data must be hosted. To support this we have region-specific root-endpoints, as shown above. This “multi-region” infrastructure is entirely internal and largely doesn’t have any impact on the customer. To reduce any additional cost of routing the API calls to the necessary region we recommend that where possible you utilise the most appropriate endpoint for a given customer or product variant.

QA

The “QA” environment will always contain the latest features currently being developed. Application Teams are welcome to target this environment should they wish, however it must be understood that the stability of this environment (and possibly its data) cannot always be guaranteed; the Banking Service team regularly use this environment to test the latest changes to functionality and/or configuration.

For updates on deployments and the state of this environment, please follow the “Deployment (QA)” channel on our Microsoft Teams team; see Contact us.

Pre-production

Also referred to as “Pre-Prod” or “PP”, this is the primary environment for Application Teams to test their integration with the Banking Service platform.

This environment is semi-regularly updated to make completed, stable work available to Application Teams.

For updates on deployments and the state of this environment, please follow the “Deployment (Pre-Prod)” channel on our Microsoft Teams team; see Contact us.

Production

“Production” is the live, customer-facing environment. Under most circumstances Applications Teams (or the Banking Service team) should refrain from performing testing on this environment; only real data should exist in the database.

Sage has a customer-facing status page for its live services, including Banking Service, accessible.

For updates on deployments and the state of this environment, please follow the “Deployment (Prod)” channel on our Microsoft Teams team; see Contact us.